by Jo Barney
No, I don’t suppose he can. “It still unfinished, the cleaning up of the slate?”
Brian gets up, finds a glass and Art’s Scotch, liquid still sloshing at the bottom. He pulls out a handful of ice cubes, drops them in the liquor, looks up and asks, “This all right?”
He’s still my son, looking for permission. “Sit down and keep talking.” I sound a little like Art.
He sits, raises his glass to his lips, for courage, maybe. “Dad had said, in that unsmiling, serious way of his, that we needed to take care of Patsy. So I went back to see her a few times, trying to understand how I could do that. She accused me of killing her, that I needed to give her money before she ended up dead in a gutter. One night she promised that that she could try harder to get clean if she didn’t have to whore and live around the druggies who squatted on her street.”
“Shit,” I said. “Blackmail again.”
Shaking his head, he disagrees. “I realized she was right. She had to leave that hole of an apartment and get back into a recovery situation. The first rehab didn’t work. She was there for thirty days, sure she was cured, then two days later she was right back where she’d started. I had to find a different place for her, and I had to be ready to pay for it.”
“The fifteen thousand dollars.”
“Right. The Avalon program lasts three months, longer if necessary, at a country estate where the clients understand they cannot leave early without the permission of the doctors who run the place. If they do, they lose their money and the possibility of ever returning. I described the program, told her I might be able to find her a job when it was all over, and then I drove her to the clinic. She listened to the director, walked through the rooms, met a couple of clients, and agreed she would do it. When I asked her why, she started crying. She said that when I first came to her door, she saw only money, then later she began to see that she might have a chance, not only to get clean but maybe to meet her daughter. ‘I won’t fuck this one up,’ she promised. She wiped her nose and pointed a finger at me. ‘And you keep watch over our girl until I’m ready to invite her into my life. Maybe she’ll invite me into hers, too.’”
“She knew about Latisha? What had happened to her?”
“I had told her that my father had been looking for Latisha, had found her, that she was a beautiful young woman. That she would be proud of her.”
“So, why the secrecy? Latisha wants to meet her birth mother, and her birth mother wants to meet her.” I eye the bottle, decide on iced tea.
“Seemed right to wait for Patsy to get on her feet. Then last month she had a relapse. I’m not sure how it works, but something about the body fighting to not give up the chemicals it’s gotten used to. She had to be sedated, confined and continue to go through withdrawal, painful as it was. She’s doing better now. She’s allowed to leave the clinic for an hour or two with an approved friend. The doctor says it will be a while before she’ll feel strong enough to go into a half-way house, and after that, she can begin her life again.” Brian drains his glass, sets it in the sink, looks out into the yard as if he can detect the next place. “She wants to go to college with her daughter.”
Now I do need a drink. I can see the next place: a tall beautiful girl and her scummy mother walking down a campus sidewalk talking about their psychology class, both of them supported with money from the troubled, uncertain man standing at my window. And a grandfather, a gentling ghost.
I gather my motherhood up. “First things first. And the first thing is your marriage.” I can remember getting riled up like this when he was ten and needed to straighten up and fly right. I move in close to him. “You have a couple of things to take care of before anything good can happen. You know what they are. While Patsy is in treatment, you need to introduce Latisha to her father and to her half brother and sister and her stepmother.” I pause, squeeze his arm, hard. “And before you do that, you have to tell Kathleen everything you have told me, letting the chips fall where they may.”
My grandfather chopped down trees for the firewood that heated the old house. One day I followed him into the woods and watched as he hacked at a trunk. Bits of wood flew out at each axe stroke until the ground was covered with white chips, the tree down and ready to be sawed into stove lengths. Grandpa saw me collecting the white bits in my coat pockets and said, “They’re too wet. Let the chips fall where they may.” Not his own original thought, of course, but the next year I found that the little pieces of alder had melted into the soil, gone except for a stump nearby waiting to be dragged out by an old tractor.
“Telling the truth is kind of like chopping at a stubborn tree, pieces of what-was dropping to the earth and disappearing,” I say.
I hand my son an axe––the words I love and I trust you––as he opens the door.
He looks back, and then he shuffles away like an old man, as old as his dead father. He shakes his head. And I understand that while I love him, will continue to love him, trust no longer exists. Perhaps he knows this, knows my axe is dull.
Chapter Thirty-Three
As Brian drives away, my knees go weak, and I wonder if I am going to pass out. Brody follows me to the lounger, and I sink into it and try to decide if I’m having an attack of some sort. No pain in my arm, I can wiggle my feet, my eyes are blurry, but they usually are. I ask Brody, “Wow, dog, what’s going on?” so I’m able to speak. But my hands, legs, most of the rest of me are trembling as if something inside is trying to break through my skin. I rest my head against the chair. I have felt this way once before. When?
Then I remember. I was seventeen, and my mother had just pulled my hair and called me a loose chippy and had locked my bedroom door as she left. She had seen Art’s and my entangled arms and legs flailing in back seat of the car he’d parked next to the neighbor’s hedge. She’d been waiting for us, hiding behind a hydrangea bush.
“You spied on us!”
“And I’ll keep doing it. You can’t go on embarrassing us in front of the neighbors like this. We’re good Christian people, and so is everyone else around here, except a certain mouthy young woman with no thought for anyone else but herself. Shape up or ship out, girl.”
After she left I curled up under my quilt and tried to quiet the surge of anger that was making my legs twitch and my lungs close up. I told myself, “I’m okay, I’m okay,” even though I was pretty sure I was not, on several fronts. I didn’t feel very innocent about what we’d been doing, not only that night, but for quite a few nights. And it would be embarrassing if Mr. Jeffrey came out and knocked on the window and asked us to leave. And I couldn’t imagine facing my father over the breakfast table in the morning. He still believed I was his little girl.
No, I wasn’t okay. But it isn’t fair to spy on a person, was it? Another wave of anger at my mother sent my skin tingling.
When I finally stopped moaning into my pillow, I began to reinterpret the message she gave to me before she slammed the door. If I heard her right, Art and I could do anything we wanted as long as she and the neighbors didn’t know. That meant Dad, too. I felt better. Not so guilty, still angry, but the jerking legs calmed down. I raised my head from my pillow and filled my lungs with the cool air flowing from under the raised sash at the foot of my bed.
And Art and I continued to make out in his car, only not anywhere near the Jeffrey hedge, and only a swelling stomach months later forced me to ship out and start my next life with my lover.
Anger is making me tremble like that girl I once was. Anger at my son. Anger, mixed with guilt, just like before. Somehow, I have managed to raise a coward. I’m responsible for a man destroying not only his own life but the lives of his family. Brian believes that the truth will cause more pain than his disappearance. After my arm-squeezing, metaphor of a lecture, he didn’t say a word. He just turned towards the door.
When did I teach him that running away solved anything? Perhaps every time I couldn’t find the courage to deal with the truth of my marriage, the many m
oments I walked away from the words and bruises that had crushed any hope of love. I couldn’t disrupt the childhood of my son; and I couldn’t face becoming the hapless woman who had no skills to keep herself alive. So, afraid, I didn’t try to change Art’s and my unspoken contract. He worked, came home, ate and criticized. I kept a house, raised a cautious son, allowed the boy’s love to fill my empty places.
I am now experiencing the results of burying myself behind narrowed eyes and grudgingly-offered meals and in the left-hand side of a cold bed. The painful words that burst from Art’s lips, his dark thoughts, were fed by my bitterness. Brian, handicapped by overweening mother-love, grew up in a home devoid of normal love. And now he’s about to create a home just like it. My fault.
I pour a glass of wine, overwhelmed with regret.
The phone rings. I break out of the fog that envelopes me and answer it. It’s Latisha, in the lunchroom at school, I can tell by the din of voices competing for mine. She seems happy to talk to me and happy in general. “What’s up with you?” she asks, giggling at something someone has said. “Oh, I have something to tell you.”
“Yeah?” I’m not going to like what comes next, I’m sure.
“Yeah. That guy you know I told you about? Well, I looked him up and found out he’s just been released from jail, and he’s waiting for a trial for lying to people. Fraud, they call it. Guess I was lucky, wasn’t I, not to fall for his scam?”
She’s apparently sipping through a straw, at the bottom of whatever she’s drinking. A sloshy gurgle erupts. And then, “I still want to find her, you know. Should I go to the agency and ask Ginnie?”
“Sounds like a good idea.” What am I saying? Somewhere in my mother’s heart I want Brian to do this, despite the slight chance that he will, and I need to give him a few days’ time to grow up. “Why don’t I go with you? I’m busy until next Monday or so, but I’d love to sit in on the conversation with the social worker. Give you a little support, maybe?”
Latisha is consulting a calendar of some sort. “I have two classes on Monday, but I am free after three. It’s close to the Lincoln building. I could walk over. Should I make an appointment with Ginnie?”
“I’ll do it. If she has the time, I’ll get back to you.” I try to sound as carefree as the blossoms of glee bursting behind my granddaughter, an attitude I might enjoy if I can ever laugh again. When I call, Ginnie seems delighted that Latisha and I will be coming by her office. “She wants to know about her birth mother,” I add. “I‘d like to sit in on the conversation, maybe give her a little support.”
“Three o’clock,” she confirms. “See you Monday.”
Brody is frowning at me. Have I forgotten to feed him? Yes. I pour out his kibbles and pour myself another glass of wine. I wait for this day to be over.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Shit. Could I have been more vague, more timid? Chips? He’ll not decide because of anything I’ve said. I’ve always been too fearful to be convincing. I should have slapped him, threatened that if he didn’t get this mess straightened out immediately that I would do it myself. I should have talked to him like I talked to his father. Been the shrew I’ve been working on for years. Maybe then his anger at me would have given him the guts to tell the truth to his wife. Now that would have been a sharp axe!
Stop. I can’t go on babbling these thoughts. Nothing I do will strengthen the backbone of the depressed man who walked away from my door an hour ago. Maybe nothing I do will.
I escape into a nap.
An hour later, my eyes spring open, startled awake by the realization that I have a breakfast date with Seth, here, Monday morning. I’d almost forgotten. How easily I forget the good things lately. I get out my notepad. It’s a relief to have something other than my son to obsess about.
I’m glad I’ve worked on the house. It no longer resembles a museum of 1970’s knickknacks. I need fresh flowers, though, and maybe one of those new coffeepots that make lattes and espresso. And cups for the lattes, large, round bowls with saucers, and…I make a list. This casual brunch will cost me a couple hundred dollars, I realize, as the list moves onto the second page. So what? I’ve always wanted to have cappuccinos on demand, haven’t I? Actually, no, but I didn’t know I wanted blond hair, either. Or fewer valleys at the ends of my lips. Can’t do anything about that before Monday, except maybe visit Phoenix for a make-over at her cosmetics counter. I call her, and she can take me later this afternoon.
“I’ll be back, Brody,” I reassure him. “After I’ve filled a few hours of not thinking about what I’m really thinking about.” Brody looks at me as if I’m out of my mind, and I agree with him.
When I get back it is nearly dinnertime, and the dog needs to go out. We don’t walk, because I don’t want to spoil my face. As I warm up some soup, I wonder if I’ll have to sleep sitting up for the next three nights for the same reason. I look pretty good for an old lady, a handsome old lady, I correct myself. I’m glad I took notes and bought more product after Phoenix worked on me. But I’m not washing this off until I have to.
I do what I’ve been avoiding doing ever since I walked in the door. I look at the phone. No message light is flashing. I pick it up, just in case. The usual buzz. But, I tell myself, if Brian and Kathleen are in the midst of a marriage-shaking conversation, why would either of them call me?
Tomorrow, I’ll hear, I tell myself, as I pick up the Oregonian and take the Arts and Entertainment section to bed with me.
Instead, in the middle of the night I hear from someone else as I drift through a flood of guilt and sadness that fills my heart, leaving me floating aimless on a black silent sea. I stir as a ghost of a scent, orange citrus, alcohol wafts by.
I feel Art’s breath on my neck. His hand touches my shoulder and moves downward until his fingers reach my breast. Tiny waves of pleasure flow from my nipple, and my breathing slows and I’m afraid to disrupt the rhythm echoing through other parts of my body.
“I’m sorry,” I hear him say.
I don’t want to open my eyes. But I do. The room is dark. I am alone and my breath comes in soft gasps. I lower my eyelids and wish him back.
He is gone, but I want to tell him that I am sorry, too. I say it out loud, and I wonder if he can hear me as clearly as I heard him.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
Will I ever reveal this dream to anyone, Art’s last words to me, my words to him? Probably not. This is between my husband and myself. I go to sleep.
I did not take the makeup off last night. My pillow is a modern piece of art, pink, black streaks, purple smudges. I’m tempted to frame it, as a remembrance of a midnight meeting, a dispelling of regret and guilt, for both of us, maybe. Brody twitches anxiously as I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand up. Unbelievably, the clock says it’s ten o’clock. The sleep of the innocent, or at least a forgiven and forgiving soul .
“Let’s go, dog,” I call to him as he paws anxiously at the door. I pull my pants on, tuck my hair under a cap. I don’t look at myself in the mirror. Another modern piece of art, I suspect, which I’ll have to explain to anyone I meet on the sidewalk, including the mailman who is standing on my porch, a pile of catalogues in his hands. “I’m waiting for the million-dollar check which will come any day,” I say, averting my face.
“Hope springs eternal,” Bob answers. “But you do have an official-looking letter here. Maybe it’s what you are waiting for?” He looks at me and grins. “Big night?”
“Senior moment involving new make-up,” I say. The letter in his hand has a return address of California Mutual Insurance. I take it and the rest of the junk mail and set it on the table next to the door. “Brody says ‘hurry’ so we’re off.” I leave Bob continuing to sort from his wheeled cart, and the dog and I rush down the sidewalk to the empty lot, our emergency potty. I could use one myself, but Brody needs to walk a little after a day of lying around in the house, so we move on to the dog park. I sit on the bench, and he joins the romping ma
ss of friends in the center of the lawn. I am not romping in any sort of way. Instead, I am close to mindlessness; an unusual peace has settled in, and I hope it’s permanent.
When he’s had enough, the dog nudges my knee and lets me know it’s time to eat. We head home.
The kibble is rattling in the dog dish, and I’ve used the toilet and washed my face when I remember the official-looking envelope. I risk a paper cut and slip my nail under the flap. My sense of peace is dissipating. This could mean thousands of dollars lost to Brian and Latisha and indeed, a re-igniting of my own sense of guilt about Art’s death, despite our reconciliation only a few hours ago. “Here we go again, dog,” but Brody is chewing so loudly he doesn’t hear me.
Mr. Crandall writes that the company has abandoned the idea of suicide, that the disruption of the prescription of atenolol could possibly have been the cause of death, but after interviews with the physician and the coroner and the insurance agent who has interviewed the widow, they could find no evidence of willful intention to die on Mr. Finlay’s part. The beneficiaries will receive their portions of the proceeds of the policy within two weeks. He thanks me for my assistance in putting this matter to rest.
I reread the letter, reach for the phone, and then put it down. The beneficiaries will get their own letters. It’s no longer up to me to tell them that I am innocent in the eyes of California Mutual of causing my husband’s death by suicide. I just need to believe it myself. I hear a voice whispering, “I’m sorry,” and I do, at least for right now.
“Hellooo.” Lynne’s greeting sounds over Brody’s crunching, and I open the door to find a glowing, joyful even, face grinning at me.
